Planning Consent has just been granted for this brownfield residential development in the Kennington Conservation area, providing six new houses for rent for historic local Lambeth charity the Walcot Foundation.
Malcolm Crayton, Director at FORMstudio, comments: “The approval for this well-mannered, low-density development, despite the considerable orchestrated opposition from its immediate neighbours, was ultimately a victory for common sense. Although it is widely recognised that the urgent need for new housing involves inevitable densification and the redevelopment of smaller brownfield sites such as this, the ‘not in my back yard’ factor can still be a major hurdle to overcome.”
Sandwiched between the long rear gardens of a grand listed Georgian terrace on Kennington Road to the west and the listed Victorian terraces of Walcot Square to the east, the scheme was described by Lambeth Planning at Pre-App as “an innovative design solution, which responds to its context and, should integrate comfortably with existing development.”
It comprises a terrace of ingeniously planned two storey + basement split-level houses and a detached ‘garden house’. The houses are located down the centre of the site at the greatest back-to-back distance from their neighbours, with west-facing sunken gardens and a hard landscaped mews to the east, while the garden house terminates the mews to the north and benefits from its own walled garden.
Conceived as a pavilion, the garden house will sit amongst retained mature trees, with an upper storey clad in bronze-finish panels laser-cut, a reference to the dappled light filtering through the tree canopy. Source and images Courtesy of FORMstudio.